The Creation Of Today's Market Society Was

Regardless Of The Overall State Of The Economy, There Is Now A Large Enough Elite Made Up Of New Multi-millionaires And Billionaires For Wall Street To See The Group As "superconsumers," Able To Carry Consumer Demand All On Their Own.

It Has No Denim-toned House Paint. Levi Makes What Is Essentially A Commodity: Blue Jeans. Its Ads May Evoke Rugged Outdoorsmanship, But Levi Hasn't Promoted Any Particular Life Style To Sell Other Products.

The Fact That Trump's Refused To Divest From His Labyrinth Of Business Holdings, The Fact That He's Continuing To Profit From His Brand And Indeed Create All Kinds Of New Opportunities To Profit Off The Presidency Is Outrageous. The Flip Side Is That He's Left Out A Lot Of Levers Through Which To Pressure Him. You Know, The Reason You Want A President To Divest From His Business Holdings Is That Foreign Governments Can Try To Exert Pressure On Him By Becoming Customers Of These Hotels And Inflating The Value Of How Much They're Willing To Pay For A Trump Brand.

I See The Gap Ads As Being A Great Example Of How Branding Has Changed. Those Gap Campaigns Are Pop Culture. They've Been Incredibly Powerful. They Have Had The Kind Of Effect On Culture That A Hit Band Has. Just Look At The Gap's Khaki Swing Ads, Which Were Music Videos. They Had This Tremendous Impact On The Industry - Suddenly Everything Started Looking Like Gap Ads And It Became Difficult To Know Who Was Co-opting Whom And Who Was Creating Culture.

The Creation Of Today's Market Society Was Not The Result Of A Sequence Of Spontaneous Events But Rather Of State Interference And Violence.